Spiritual Growth from the Christian School of Thought | July 13, 2025 Sunday School

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The message you're about to hear was preached at Liberty Baptist

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we hope that this message from God's Word will be a blessing to

you. Colossians chapter #2 And we'll

be in verses one through 7 of Colossians 2.

So if you're there, we'll begin our reading.

Colossians 2, verse one. For I would that you knew what

great conflict I had for you and for them at Laodicea, and for as

many as have not seen my face in the flesh, that their hearts

might be comforted being knit together in love.

And unto the full riches I'm sorry unto all riches, of the

full assurance of understanding, to the acknowledgement of the

mystery of God, and of the Father, and of Christ, in whom

are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.

And notice what he says next. Under whom are all the treasures

of wisdom and knowledge? Notice it says there are hid.

It seems perhaps like maybe not an important point, but it it's

really important. And you'll see that as we get

into the the lesson. They are hid in him in whom

would be Jesus Christ. And this I say, lest any man

should beguile you with enticing words.

For though I be absent in the flesh, yet am I with you in the

Spirit, join and beholding your order and the steadfastness of

your faith in Christ. Now verses 6 and seven really

represent what I would say is the core climax of the letter.

This is the whole point. This is everything he's trying

to get across and he does it in 2 verses here verse verse 6.

Verse 7 would really be probably the most important statements in

the whole letter. So notice what he says.

As he have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk

in him, rooted and built up in him, and stablished in the faith

as you have been taught, abounding therein with

Thanksgiving. So the the title of the lesson

this morning is Spiritual Growth from the Christian School of

Thought. Spiritual growth from the

Christian School of thought. Probably many of you have just

seen, just driving around, I noticed as we were coming here,

many different entities, religious entities, different

groups that are trying to teach people theology or religion,

truth about God, right? There are many different groups

that are out there and they all have their own spin on things.

They all have their own message to deliver, right?

And they're trying to reach you. They're trying to get that

message to you. And here in Colossae there was

those individuals who were going around, they were trying to

spread a message. And it was, it was somewhat

similar in the way it sounded to the Christian message which

these believers at Colossae had received.

And so they, they got duped into listening to these so-called

teachers and it began to steer them away from that belief that

they had placed in Jesus Christ the true doctrine of

Christianity. And so they, they were coming

from two different schools of thought, right?

You've heard of that term, I'm sure a school of thought.

It's a common expression that signifies a particular way of

thinking about something, right? You have a, you have a perhaps a

school of thought over here that you would say if you're a

Democrat, you'd have a particular school of thought

about things, wouldn't you? It's amazing.

You mentioned you mentioned something about politics and

everyone. He wakes up all of a sudden,

right? And then you see, maybe the

Republicans would have a different school of thought than

the Democrats. I think we could agree on that,

right? We probably live in the most

divided time in our country's history.

I mean, so much division and polarity in our culture today,

two different schools of thought.

I'm not here to talk to you about politics today.

I'm simply here to illustrate the point that there are

different schools of thought and we want to make sure that our

school of thought is coming from the truth of God's Word, right?

From the revelation that God has given.

And, and most of the time people will make that claim, but the

problem comes down to how they interpret Scripture, right?

There's different ways of coming and approaching the Scripture as

independent Baptist. We interpret God's word as it is

literally grammatically using the context, defining the words

so that we could see exactly what God's word is to us.

And So what I believe this passage is dealing with as we,

as we study it, and we'll have to talk about the letter and the

context and everything that was going on there in Colossae,

We'll see the, the apostle Paul, who certainly wrote under divine

inspiration of God, his school of thought concerning Christian

growth. And, and it, and I think we'll

see as we get into this that Christian growth is not about

adding more, but it's actually about going deeper.

It's, and it's apparent to me that we live in a society,

especially with churches today, and I'm using that term quite

loosely, but churches have tried to adopt all different models

and ways of reaching people and getting people into the to just

to come to church, right? I mean, there was a time in our

country's history when people just came to church.

You didn't have to pull their arm, you didn't have to twist

their arm. They just came, they just showed

up. And that's not the society we

live in today, is it? I mean, there certainly is an

interest. But I mean, I just, I just

mentioned to some of the gentleman in the back, there was

a road race going on this morning.

We were stuck in traffic for probably 7 minutes.

And to me that seems like a long time, right?

I mean, we're, we're busy. We're trying to get from one

place to the next. And I'm here, I am trying to

preach and teach this morning. I'm like, come on, people, hurry

up. I got to get to church and

they're doing it on a Sunday. There's a time in our history

that wouldn't have happened. You couldn't even go to a

grocery store on Sunday. What?

That's not the case today, is it Because there's a different

school of thought. Our society is more secular than

it's ever been. And so churches have tried to

make church more appealing to people.

And what they've actually done in the process is not have

church. So they do think try to get

people in the door. I was just, I just saw this

recently, Mario Church, the pastor is dressed up like Mario

from Nintendo. And they had hundreds of

thousands of people attending this.

There's like 80,000 people at this mega church.

Well, that's not church, It's Mario and it's Nintendo.

And they're trying to do that to get people to sit in the seats.

But just because you have people sitting in the seats doesn't

mean you're successful. It doesn't mean that you've

accomplished anything. It just means you've changed the

way you're reaching people. And if you reach them with that,

then you're going to have to keep them with that.

And so this church at Colossae had been reached, but not with

the truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

And, and, and I know that your church is, is about doing soul

winning and visitation and, and that you're open with preaching

the gospel to people and reaching people with the truth

of God's word. And, and you'll find that when

you try to go reaching people, they've already been reached by

something before you got there. They've been reached by

something and between social media, between the information

age, people have been reached with all types of messages that

simply are not true. They're not rooted in God's

word. And and what the Bible teaches

is that when you give in or give heed to false teaching, it

doesn't improve your life. A big surprise, right?

When you when you give in to false teaching, it doesn't

improve your life, but but it also it always rather has this,

this conclusion, destruction and ruin.

And these believers, I'm not going to say they had, they had

wholesale bought into it, but they were, they were really

entertaining some of these different ideas about Christian

growth. And, and what they were, what

they were trying to tell these believers, these false teachers

is what I'm going to refer to them as, was this theology that

was based on kind of like a the theology, the theologic word

would be syncretism, where you kind of mix in a little bit of

this and mix in a little bit of this and then mix in a little

bit of this. And what you end up with is kind

of like a monstrosity, right? It's got a little bit of

everything. And so this, this theological

recipe that they had concocted was causing them to doubt that

Jesus Christ was all that they needed, that they needed to do

works, or that they needed to add to their salvation to make

them like elite Christians. Well, there's no such thing as

elite Christians. There's just sinners saved by

grace. And you have all that you need

in Christ to live the Christian life.

Amen. He's all that you need, and

God's word is all that you need. And so we'll see when we, when

we read this that he's, he's talking about this great

conflict that he had for them, this great conflict.

And, and there is a conflict that's going on for your

spiritual well-being. Even this morning, there's a

conflict going on. Sometimes you may be aware of

it, sometimes you may have an awareness that this conflict is

going on. But I would say most of the time

we're probably not as aware and we could be even oblivious to

the conflict that's going on around us.

And it is a conflict of, of who's going to be your greatest

influence. And so Paul the apostle wrote to

the to the church here. He actually had never visited

this church. He had never preached to them

personally. It was likely started by this

man Epaphras. And we'll, we'll get into that

just in a little bit. But he had never personally

visited them and and Colossi was in their society as a as a town

you would say, or a village had dwindled quite significantly in

significance and and status from what they were previously.

And so it was, it was on this strategic location where the

East and the West would meet. And so all you, all you, you

could imagine traveling, right? There's ideas and, and

philosophies that would come from the East and ideas and

philosophies that would come from the West.

And there were those that were coming and they were traveling

through here and they really weren't going to Colossae.

They were just stopping there on the way, right?

You know, there's some towns and some places they're really not

that important. You know, it's kind of like

where I live in Connecticut. Every time I've I've talked to

people outside of the state say, oh, I've never been to

Connecticut. Well, you're either traveling

through get to New York or to get to Boston or go somewhere

else because, I mean, it's just no reason to stay unless you're,

you got to go through there to get somewhere right?

Now, what's kind of like what colossi was.

And they had dwindled in their wealth and their economy.

And so they really weren't that important anymore.

But nonetheless, these ideas, this influx of ideas had come

through and it had influenced them.

And there were three particular ideas or philosophies that had

come through into this teaching that that the Colossians were

buying into. And the first would be Judaism.

Judaism. You're familiar with Judaism,

right? The the idea that you needed to

practice the law to merit favor with God.

Judaism in and of itself wasn't necessarily wrong.

It was just always meant to lead to Jesus Christ.

It was never meant to be perpetually practiced by people

because the true Jews are the ones that really knew the

message that was preached would understand that the law was

intended to show to us our need for a Savior.

Amen. You go through the 10

commandments and you realize I can't follow the 10

commandments. Amen.

Anyone here want to stand up and say I've followed them all?

Every day of my life, I follow the 10 commandments.

You say that and you are lying because you haven't.

We're all sinners. We've all fallen short of the

glory of God, and the law shows us that we are guilty before

God. Good morning.

Glad to have you in church this morning.

That's what it says. We're all guilty and we need a

Savior. So Judaism was influencing them

as there was this prevailing idea, particularly to Gentiles

from the Jewish world, that if you're not a Jew, you're not as

close to God as we are. And so you need to practice the

law, you need to be circumcised, you need to practice the ritual

washings, you need to be, you need to be part of the Sabbath

worship. And it's kind of like going back

into Judaism so that you could be a better Christian.

And if you're, if you're solid in the word of God, you would

think, no, that doesn't make any sense because Christianity is,

is the final truth. It's the final revelation in

Christ. We have all that we need.

He's our Savior, Amen. He's all that we need, and in

Him not through us, we know that we have the righteousness that

appeases. God's just demands.

So there's nothing you can do to make yourself more righteous.

If you have Christ, you are righteous.

You're perfectly righteous. There's no degrees of

righteousness, right? You're either righteous and

you've and you're pure before God or you're sinful and you're

defiled before God. There's only two categories.

There can be, and thus it makes no sense have to practice these

rituals and which by the way, have no spiritual significance.

They're just physical washings. And the circumcision, all of

those things were given to the Jews for that purpose, but they

were never meant to be practiced after Jesus Christ.

And so they had Judaism, but then they also had another

teaching, this teaching of Eastern mysticism and Hellenism.

What we would think of is probably like Greek philosophy.

And they were using these Greek philosophers like Plato and

Aristotle. And then they were, they were

mixing that with the Judaism. And then they were also mixing

it with a, with a new doctrine that was called Gnosticism.

You said, Brother Brett, I don't know what all these words mean.

And you may, you may not think about it in these theological

terms, but believe it or not, it has made its way into the 21st

century Gnosticism. You haven't, you haven't seen

that on your feed on social media or watched it on YouTube.

That was the ancient form. But it's this idea that we are

in the know. That's what Nos means.

Nos means knowledge Gnosis. And the idea was that we are

Gnostics. We are, we are in the know.

We have knowledge that everyone else doesn't have.

And if you want to get it, you got to come through us, you see.

And, and really what I would say this was, was a cult teaching

that had followed what I would say is probably the, the most

common form that all cults follow.

And it's used in mathematical terms.

They add, they add to divine revelation.

In other words, they say, yeah, God's word is not enough.

You need my teaching plus God's word.

Well, that's false teaching. We believe that this is the

final revelation of God. There's nothing to be added to

it. There's nothing to be subtracted

from it, right? And so they add to divine

revelation. Jehovah's Witnesses do this, all

of the publications of the of the Watchtower Society.

You need to read these publications.

You need to listen to our teachers and you need to read

our version of the Bible. Mormons do this.

Joseph Smith who had had an experience and said he saw these

golden plates. Of course, no one can verify

that it happened. And the ones that said it

happened ended up reneging on their testimony and saying it

was false. But some man has this experience

and in his mind he says, well, I've got a vision from God and

it's it's going to correct Christianity for the past 1800

years. You should listen to me.

And so they add to divine revelation, but they also

subtract from the person of Jesus Christ.

They make him less than who he really is.

He is God manifest in the flesh. They said, no, no, no, he's not

God. He's a good teacher.

He's like a rabbi. He came to teach us the Golden

Rule. And he, he's, you know, he's

pretty high up there, but he's not God.

False teaching. And then they multiply the

requirements of salvation. They add, subtract, multiply.

They multiply the requirements of salvation.

No, you don't just need to be saved.

You also need to be circumcised or you need to be baptized or

you need to do it. Take a two year missions trip.

You need to take all these other steps and then maybe you'll be

saved. That's what cults do.

And you can imagine the burden that that places under people as

they're constantly working, as they're trying to hope that they

can make it. If I do this, maybe I'll be

good. And if I do this, and then if I

do this, and then if I take communion enough times and then

if I give enough times and it's you're always under this burden

and never able to truly spiritually grow, you see.

And then they divide the loyalties of their followers.

Oh, you, if you're not one of us, we, we, we don't have

anything to do with you. Now, I do want to be careful

with this point because as biblical truth does mandate that

we would be separated, it doesn't mandate that we would be

isolated. Did you catch that?

There's a difference between separation.

Separation means I'm not like the world.

I'm not going to give in to the morality of the world.

I'm not going to give in to the unholiness of the world that is

against God. But isolation takes it a step

further and says you're all dirty and unclean.

I don't want anything to do with you.

I'm just going to go on my own little island somewhere and

separate from the world. Jesus didn't call us to

completely isolate ourselves. He taught us to go into all the

world, didn't he? How are we going to go into all

the world if we're so worried in our own little watchtower

somewhere, in a castle, hiding from the world?

We can't do that. That's what cults do.

So you can imagine how, how destructive, how dangerous this

teaching was to these believers at Colossi and what he's saying

here, in this first verse here of Colossians chapter 2.

Colossians 2 · chapter mention

I want you to know what great conflict I had for you and for

them at Laodicea. And for as many as have not seen

my face in the flesh. Paul had a burden for them.

And just just imagine, he had never met these people before.

He'd never visited them. He'd never seen their faces.

He didn't even know their names. But he knew there was a church

there and he knew also there was a church at Laodicea.

We're going to talk about them tonight.

And also as many as have not seen my face in the flesh.

I believe there was also another church in Hierapolis, all that

were planted by this man Epaphras.

So if you'd like to, to turn with me, go to Colossians 1 and

verse #7 to to make the point here.

Colossians 1/7 what he says as he, as he also learned of

Epaphras. So Epaphras was a teacher.

They learned of Epaphras, which implies Epaphras was a teacher.

Our dear fellow servant, who is for you a faithful minister of

Christ. OK, now chapter 4, verse 12,

still in Colossians, chapter 4, verse 12, as he is saluting the

Colossians 4:12

brethren here, he says in verse 12A, Pafrus, who is one of you,

a servant of Christ, saluteth you always laboring fervently

for you in prayers, that you may stand perfect and complete in

all the will of God. I'll drop down to verse #16 and

I think this is important point that we'll revisit tonight.

He says this in verse 16. And when this epistle is read

among you, 'cause that it be read also in the Church of the

Laodiceans, and that you likewise read the epistle from

Laodicea. So while we need to understand

what was going on in Colossae, it was never the intent of the

New Testament authors that their letters would only reach or only

circulate to that one church, but rather that they would

circulate through all the churches and for all of God's

people. Now, the letter to Laodicea

didn't make it into Scripture because it wasn't Scripture,

Amen. If it was, God would have

preserved it for us because we believe God's preserved His word

and that it is without error and, and that we have access to

it. We still have access to the

letter deck colossi. And that teaches us that God

intended not just for the Colossians to hear it, but for

us to hear it. And while we're not dealing with

Gnosticism and, and some of these problems, we do deal with

other problems today. And, and the principles that we

see here about spiritual growth are really very simple.

And I'm not going to let the cat out of the bag too early in the

message because I don't want you to fall asleep.

But I'll tell you and give you just a little bit of a glimpse

that the whole point he's trying to make is that if you want to

grow spiritually, you don't need to go outside of what you have.

You just need to go deeper with what you already have.

Amen. Doesn't that really change

everything? When we talk about church life

and we talk about things in church about how, how there's

such an appeal to have more technology and there's an appeal

to make services more engaging and to, to really try to find

ways to entertain people, how does that make us different from

anyone else? Are people not entertained

enough? I mean, the attention span of

most people today is, is on average far less than it ever

used to be. I mean to just try to, and, and

this is not the insulting one, but just try to get people to

sit in a 45 minute service to listen to preaching.

And it's just like what I mean, I'm not trying to be mean

spirited today, but that's a problem folks.

We expect our children to sit in school for 8 hours a day and

learn, and adults can't sit in the church service for 45

minutes. I mean, I'm thankful for you

all. You're awake this morning and

I've been trying to engage you the best I can.

But we don't need more entertainment.

We don't need more of the world's things.

We need more of God's Word in our lives, and that's how we

grow. You're not going to grow apart

from God's Word and you're not going to grow apart from a

relationship to the local church.

You see? So that's the conflict that's

going on because I have a great conflict for you and I, and I

would say to you this morning that there is a conflict going

on over your spiritual well-being.

So these churches are there and, and, and Paul hasn't visited

them. And he's saying this is my, this

is my desire for you. This is my conflict for you.

And that the word conflict in Greek really basically has the

idea of agony. It's, it's like a it's like a

wrestling match that's that's face to face.

And he's like, this is really intense.

And this, this conflict that's going on is really heated.

And, and this is my conflict for you is that you and all these

other believers in this region that have been affected by this

teaching that their hearts might be comforted.

Aren't you glad that God wants you to be comforted?

You know what false teaching doesn't produce comfort.

It only produces conflict because you'll always be

wondering and they design it this way.

So to keep you coming, right, you got to keep doing the works

and you got to keep coming and you got to keep doing this.

Otherwise God won't accept you and otherwise you won't be

saved. So people, rather than motivated

by true genuine passion for Jesus and love for Jesus and

assurance and confidence, they're motivated by fear and

they're motivated by the potential.

What if I do something wrong? Is God going to like ZAP me

down? God's not going to ZAP you down

if you're a believer this morning.

And even if you're not a believer, if you're a visitor

this morning, God loves you. And God brought you here today

to hear his word, not because I'm teaching, I'm not anybody,

but because it's God's word this morning.

And he says I'm, I have a conflict because I want you to

be comforted. I want you to be comforted.

You know, I'm thankful for your pastor.

He's been a great blessing to me.

And I know that he has this part for you here at this church,

that he wants you to be comforted in your faith.

He wants you to know the truth and be grounded.

And any, I mean any pastor, any minister that's worth his salt

has the desire that people that are under his ministry would be

comforted. If they'd be built up, they'd be

edified in their faith, comforted.

Notice the next word, the next phrase.

Rather being knit together in love, knit together in love.

You know, there's a, there's a prevailing idea in Christianity

Today that you can grow spiritually on your own, and

that's just not in the Bible. I, I, I hate to tell you, but

you, you, you won't be able to grow or reach your full

potential apart from God's work in your life through a local

church. It's just not going to happen.

And he did not design Christianity to be practiced

individually, but corporately as a faith community.

It's so important. And, and I've, I've preached

this at the church where I come from and other churches I've

seen where you just, you can tell when there's a church that

has that knit together in love going on.

They pray for one another. They don't bicker, they don't

gossip. Those things are so destructive

in a church and they happen because people are in churches.

Amen. I mean, people are sinners.

And wherever you have people, you have problems.

That's just the reality. And guess what?

There's people here at Liberty Baptist Church and there's

people where I come from a Grace Bible Baptist Church and I'm a

people, a person. And so I know my own problems

and my own sinful tendencies. And, and God's design is that we

would be knit together in love, that we would grow past our

sinful tendencies, that we wouldn't just put it off and

say, well, no one's perfect. Well, we all know that, but

that's not an excuse not to grow.

Amen. But we're to be knit together in

love, which means you ought to be close with your church

family. I think it's important that we

say church family because that's what it's supposed to be.

That's what God intended. And that's why we say, hey,

brother Rivero, hey brother Dan, brother Chuck, brother Dave.

There's nothing wrong with calling someone by their first

name without saying brother or sister in front of it.

But the whole point is that we're we're brothers and sisters

in Christ. We're a family through the blood

of Jesus Christ. We are blood relatives this

morning. Amen.

I I haven't met some of you just until today, but I know this.

For those of you that are saved and believe in Jesus Christ,

we're Blood Brothers. Praise God for that.

And notice that he says this and unto all riches.

Notice the financial terms he's using here unto all riches of

the full assurance of understanding.

You get what he's saying there. That real treasure, the real

treasure of your Christian life, is having full assurance of

understanding. If you don't understand God's

plan for your life or the doctrine of God, then you'll

never have the true riches, because true riches come from

understanding God's plan for your life.

It's in understanding the truth to the acknowledgement of the

mystery of God and of the Father and of Christ, the

acknowledgement of the mystery of God.

Now, I'm going to touch on this briefly.

I don't want to get too bogged down in this because sometimes

preachers chase rabbits and they never kill the buck, right?

So we want to, we don't want to chase the rabbit and not kill

the buck, but we do need to chase this rabbit for just a

little while. But we're going to make sure

that we chase them and then go off to the main idea.

The mystery that he was talking about there was related to the

false teaching that was going on that was basically elevating

Jews above Gentiles, which basically promoted this idea

that you had, you had elite people and you had common

people, right? I mean, you had like super

Christians. These are the best Christians

that there are. And then you have, well, I mean,

they, they come, but they're not like one of us.

The mystery that he's referring to was that because all

believers are in Christ, we all have equal standing in Christ.

There's there's no better and worse.

We're all equal. The, the, the playing field is

level at the cross because in Jesus Christ, we all share the

same standing before God. Regardless of your wealth,

regardless of your status, regardless of your family you

come from, regardless of the job that you have, regardless of

what street you live on, you're in Christ.

Jews and Gentiles in the same body, all worshipping God

together. That's the mystery.

But notice he says this in verse 3.

In whom? Now you have to use grammar to

understand who he's referring to.

The last word there was in verse #2 Christ Christ.

You see that in whom? OK, so he's Speaking of Christ

as the whom, in whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and

knowledge. Who, who has all the wisdom and

knowledge? It's hidden, Yes.

And that's that word that the Gnostics were using, the idea

that the that the the hidden teaching wasn't them.

It's not in them, it's in him. Jesus has all of the teachings.

He has all the wisdom and all the knowledge in him, but

they're hidden. If if you have a shallow walk

with God and you have a shallow surface level understanding of

the scriptures, you're never going to get to the full riches

you're never going to get, You're never going to mine the

wealth that's there because it's too shallow.

He's hidden them. Why would God allow someone

who's really not interested in understanding his truth or

interested in knowing him and just have a shallow surface

level understanding of God? Why would he not?

Why would he just give that out so freely, right?

In fact, this is one of the, I think one of the most, I don't

know. It's a profound truth that Jesus

taught in parables, not to make things easier to understand for

people, but to conceal truth. Now that may maybe no one else

sees that as an important point, but I see that as an incredible

point that God taught in a way to conceal the truth because

here's what it did. It filtered through the motives

of the people that were coming to watch him.

Do you know that not everybody that came to the church services

that Jesus had, I know there wasn't necessarily church

services then, but the people that came to hear Jesus, not all

of them came because they wanted to be believed in Jesus Christ.

Some of them just wanted to be entertained.

Some of them just wanted food. No, I'm a, I'm a Baptist, Amen.

And Baptist love food. Amen.

And that's just, that's got to be one of the fundamentals of

the faith, right? I mean, you have, you have to

love food if you're a Baptist. But that's not why we're

supposed to come to church. Supposed to come to church

because we want to know Jesus more and we want to serve him.

And you know what he's saying? If you want to grow spiritually,

you don't need to add this way, You don't need to add this way.

You don't need this program and this program and this

entertainment system and this sound system.

And I'm not saying all technology is bad.

I'm just simply saying it's not going to contribute to your

spiritual growth. But you know what will?

Going deeper in your walk with God and going deeper in your

understanding of Jesus Christ and saying, Lord, I want to know

you more. I want to fellowship with you

more. And you know what you'll find

you will never exhaust the treasures of wisdom and

knowledge in him. He'll never exhaust it.

So it's, it's not like, OK, you know, I remember as a kid, we

would, we would dig, right? So you're digging a hole to

China, right? You just keep digging a dig.

Sooner or later you're going to hit a wall, right?

You're not going to be able to go any further.

But that's not so with God. And that's not so with your

relationship with Jesus Christ. You keep digging and you'll keep

getting more treasure. So what does that mean for you

this morning? Keep digging or start digging.

That's the application. How do I do that?

Well, we'll talk about that in a little bit because there's

really two ways, two ways that we do this.

He says this in verse 4 and this is really the reason why he's

writing to them. And he says, and this I say, I'm

telling you this, lest any man should beguile you with enticing

words. Just something I've learned is

that false teachers are typically powerful orators.

Typically speaking, it's not to say they all are and it's not to

say right preachers are all poor orators, but generally speaking

they are successful because they have an ability to communicate

right? I mean, Brother Dan and I took

practice preaching at Heartland Baptist Bible College and

there's basically 2 ideas. You have the content of the

message and then you have the delivery.

You know, if you're a really good in your delivery, God can

really use that and God is for it, He designed it.

But if your content is false, there is no amount of good

delivery that can salvage that message.

Did I miss anyone there? Just because they sound

impressive and just because they sound convincing doesn't mean

you should listen to what they're saying.

That's why we bring our Bibles to church.

I praise God that we bring our Bibles to church.

Why? Because you can check out what

Brother Brett is saying this morning.

You have the word of God right in front of you.

And it's not so so we could have a skepticism towards preachers,

but it's so we can know for sure before we appropriate some

message to our life that it aligns with God's word.

And what they were doing is unlike the Bereans of

Thessalonica, they were just wholesale swallowing what these

teachers were saying, and it was derailing their faith.

And he says, for though I be absent in the flesh, yet am I

with you in the Spirit, enjoying and beholding your order and the

steadfastness of your faith in Christ.

So I'm not with you there, but I'm with you in spirit.

And I know you have a good testimony.

This is a good church. And they were about to get off

track if they continued to give heed to this teaching.

But Paul is saying you don't need any of that.

Here's what you need as you have therefore received Christ Jesus

the Lord. OK, as means like, right, as

means like in the same manner that you receive Christ Jesus as

Lord. Well, how do you receive Christ

Jesus the Lord? Well, there's only one way we're

in agreement on that, right? There's only one way you can

receive them. There's no not multiple ways.

There's just one way, and it is in humility to believe on the

Lord Jesus Christ and receive. Receive.

It means to accept, right? I mean, the idea of the

illustration we often give as preachers is that it's a gift.

The gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ.

How do you receive a gift? Well, there's nothing you can do

to earn it otherwise. It's not a gift anymore, right?

I've been privileged to have my birthday on the 21st of

December, which is just a few days before Christmas, which

usually means one of two things. You get gypped on one of them or

you get double presents. And praise God, I usually got

double presents because I'm an only child and so my parents

said no one else to give stuff to but me, right?

You know what I had to do to receive those gifts?

Just sit, just take them. Thank my parents for the

blessing they were to me or, or my uncles or whoever gave me

gifts. I didn't have to pay for it.

I wouldn't have been able to because I was just a kid.

By the way, there's no currency you possess that could merit

salvation with God. You don't own a there's no

currency that you have that God would see and say, well, this is

this is it. I'll accept this.

He won't accept it. It says very clearly in

Ephesians chapter 2 that God will not let us earn salvation

Ephesians 2 · chapter mention

or merit salvation through our works, lest any man should

boast. If God let you work your way to

heaven, you'd spend all eternity talking about how good you are.

You won't let us do that. We receive it by grace through

faith. So as you have therefore

received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him.

So how do I walk in Him? The idea of walking is a common

illustration in Christian teaching.

It just means to take repeated steps in the truth, to take

repeated steps in your walk with God.

We call your walk with God, right?

Which simply just means you're taking a journey with Christ,

You're going somewhere, and hopefully you're growing rooted

and built up in him, in him. OK, how are you going to grow?

You need to make sure your roots are in Christ.

So if you're saved this morning, then you don't need to get

rooted. You're already rooted, you

understand you had roots already in Christ now because He is the

source of all of your spiritual nourishment and He is the source

of all your spiritual nutrients that you need to follow the

illustration of a tree. Then the tree will just grow

because it has the right roots and it gets built up and it's

become strong and it becomes sturdy.

How sturdy are you in your Christian life?

Well, how deep are you rooted in Christ?

You can't get more saved than you already are.

You understand that. I'm not saying that, but in your

walk with God, or as he says here to soul walk with him, then

you're you go deeper and by going deeper in Christ, he helps

you to grow. So that tells me that we have

reason not to read our Bibles less, but to read our Bibles

more. How about that?

Do you think you're going to grow by being in the word less

or being in church less or being under less preaching or having

less prayer time? I mean I don't think every

message should apply. Read your Bible and pray.

Read your Bible and pray. Read your Bible and pray.

But this would certainly be 1. Read your Bible and pray.

Because if you want to grow you need to read your Bible and

pray. And it wouldn't.

It wouldn't be as much a need to be stressed if believers did

read their Bible and pray, but it's amazing how many that I've

seen that simply won't, they just won't commit themselves to

doing it. And it's no wonder that their

Christian life is unstable. So, so here, here's the main

truth to get across this morning.

You have to receive the truth, right?

You have to receive it. And then you have to resume in

Christian disciplines. And that's how you grow.

That's the Christian School of thought on growth.

You have all that you need in Jesus Christ.

Thank you for listening to the sermon from the pulpit of

Liberty Baptist Church. If this message was a blessing

to you, or if there's any way we can serve you, please let us

know by contacting us at [email protected].

Or you can visit us this Sunday at 800 Washington St. in Easton,

MA. May the Lord bless you as you

grow in His Word.